Beginning in the 1980s with LiFT and other festivals mainly based in continental Europe, and expanding in the 2000s to include North America, a new form of 'curated live-arts festival' responded to globalized neoliberalism, challenged the cafeteria-style programming of 'the circuit', and began to purposefully bring artists together in generative juxtapositions or collaborations rather than as signal representatives of their nations of origin. Downloading risks and responsibilities to artists-as-entrepreneurs, this model has nevertheless also transformed festival programming into a creative rather than merely administrative activity, while also imagining new roles for festivalgoers as participants and often enabling social as well as artistic experimentation to cross political and cultural as well as disciplinary borders. Finally, they find ways of exploring the inter-imbrication of the work of international guests and the life of the host city both inside and outside of traditional theatrical spaces. They tend, that is, to address local rather than tourist audiences, to engage directly with local issues and neighbourhoods, and they often exceed traditional festival temporalities.